


Fall on Your Knees

by dorian_burberrycanary



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Another Scene in the Diner, Episode Fix-it, F/M, Fix-It, southside serpents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:38:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorian_burberrycanary/pseuds/dorian_burberrycanary
Summary: The idea unfolds like poetry as he strips off his jacket and hat and flicks open the knife with a snick that’s too loud in his ears. Like Tarantino meets fucking Shakespeare. (The 2.09 fallout.)





	Fall on Your Knees

**Author's Note:**

> For tallulalusa. Thanks to my wonderful betas— soyforramen, mercuryfish and theatreofexpression—for all their help.

The idea unfolds like poetry as he strips off his jacket and hat and flicks open the knife with a snick that’s too loud in his ears. Like Tarantino meets fucking Shakespeare. He'll get his pound of flesh for the knocked back shot of whisky in the bar that his dad and Betty and Archie all should've stayed far away from.

He crouches down, grabs Penny’s arm, pulls and twists, and puts his knife to the skin above the mark of her two-headed snake.

But Penny keeps on fighting, even when held down by all these hands. She screams and jerks her arm back from the blade, so the first slice goes deep but takes off only half the snake.

Only half a snake.

The soft contempt in Tall Boy’s voice rings in Jughead’s ears. His chest goes tight. The beams of headlights fall on the twisting shapes of bodies, kneeling together, writhing. Anywhere the light can catch sharpens to such bright edges—rings and zippers, eyes and the gleam of teeth.

The silence is broken by the scuffle of holding her down and how she keeps on screaming _stop._ Red runs down her arm in slick lines. The half a snake stares up at him and you can’t be half a Serpent. He tried and tried and you can't.

From far away, he hears Sweet Pea say, “You’re just making it worse for yourself, bitch.”

Jughead takes the rest off with a jagged slice. He can hear someone say, “Well, fuck,” impressed, and then a whoop of delight mixed up with an eerie high-pitched gasp that goes on too long.

They leave her in a heap on the ground, shaking and moaning and streaked with the blood that keeps on welling up—

Such a small patch of skin. That much blood.

He hadn't known—

And she kept trying to yank her arm away. The whole force of her held-down body jerking back.

Jughead stands by his bike in the glow of overlapping headlights with the road under his feet again and spilling out in a dark line ahead. He stares at the red edge of the knife. He doesn't know if you can close a dirty switchblade. Doesn’t that mess it up? What do you do with a bloody—

Jughead stands by his bike, holding the open knife away from his body. Both his hands are wet with—

Fangs claps him on the back and says, “Man. That was—” and gives his shoulder a hard shake rather than finish.

His mind slips words into the silence: _a wild sort of_ —but he stumbles on _justice._ Jughead can hear Penny moaning. She’s not screaming anymore but he can still hear screams, animal-like and too close in his ears. Jughead can’t quite feel his hands and he's cold without his beanie, without his jacket. The sound of engines sparking to life around him keeps shifting, now muted, now dialed up too loud. He feels untethered, from the bikes and his friends, from the streaks of light slicing out over the road and the field, from the lines and splatters of—

Sweet Pea tosses him an oil-stained rag and nods with a quick jerk of his head, man to man. Jughead had asked if Sweet Pea stood with him. Toni had called out the law and Sweet Pea had stood up in unity with him. His fight was their fight was our fight.

Jughead wipes off the knife. For a stuttering pause he can’t think of what to do with the rag—stained with oil and blood—so he wraps the knife in it and tucks the whole mess into his bike and says, “Let’s get out of here,” to no one in particular.

He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t try to yell over the engines. But Toni claps twice and circles a finger in the air, forming big twisting loops. Sweet Pea nods in agreement and climbs on his bike. A kickstand goes up with a hard snap.

Jughead’s voice might have been quiet, aimed at nobody, but he gets listened to all the same.

He puts on his jacket and his helmet and gets back on his dad’s old bike.

 

 

 

 

 

The Serpents rev their engines as they peel away from the turnout back towards Riverdale, casting a rumble of noise out into the dark. The wind rushes by like a slap. Vague shapes form and vanish at the edge of road.

You never know what you’re going to meet on the road to Greendale.

In the space between branches, stars hang over the road, pinprick points of light knocked out of the night sky. Up ahead, Toni’s long pink hair twists from under her helmet like she's being grabbed at by unseen hands.

Penny had sent him down this road—made him drag Archie half the way, but then Archie didn’t turn back when Jughead gave him the chance. Penny had made him climb into that strange truck with that strange man to sit there too aware of the crate and whatever was under the tarp in the back. He sat there strung out with nerves and so tired while on the radio an angry voice he still can't forget preached about _judgment day_ and how _Riverdale is soulless—_

For a terrible moment he loses track of the road and he’s back in the town hall staring up at Betty. How she shone under that spotlight, his reckless golden girl tensed up with nerves but doing what was right. How her eyes had found him in the back of the room and held his gaze. That slow, glowing smile given out to the whole room but meant for him.

The unsteady gleam of a headlight rolls across his hands and he sees red streaks. On a bike, going this fast, the wind always sounds like a drawn out scream.

 _She had it coming_. Jughead mouths the words to himself. _Bitch had it coming._

He follows the dark smear of the road and lets the wind batter him till his mind is almost blank. Jughead is aware he’s cold. His hands are cold and his face and this knot lodged in his chest.

But if you’re cold enough, at least you stop feeling it.

 

 

 

 

 

The bikes scatter as they reach the Southside, dropping away in ones and twos until he pulls up in front of the trailer alone. His mind gets stuck on what he needs to clean up: _bike handles, rag, knife, hands, boots, check for splatter—_

He climbs the stairs and doesn’t want to touch the doorknob with drying blood on his hands, but he has no choice.

_Doorknob, bike handles, rag—_

Washing the blood off his hands in the bathroom sink is harder than he’d expected. Getting the red out from under his nails as tinges of bright color slip down the drain. The blood kept on welling up, running down to her elbow in a tangles of red lines. He hadn’t thought there’d be so much—

The knife cleans up easy.  

He folds the dirty rag up into quarters and then eighths and stuffs it under the kitchen sink, out of sight. He checks his boots but can’t find any blood.

He grabs paper towels, dampened and rung back out, for the doorknob. But when he steps back into the cold and shines his phone’s flashlight at the front door, no marks are visible. The dented silver doorknob floats in a stark circle of light without any streaks. No big red handprint.

Jughead checks his bike. He pictures red fingerprints curved along the handles—the marks turn vivid each time he blinks. But no matter how long he points the wavering flashlight at the bike, the grips look the same as they did this morning.

He climbs back up the steps, tosses the useless damp paper towels, sits down on the couch and waits.

He’s not sure for what.

At last, with a rush, the thought hits him: _I fixed it._

_Dad can stop. Dad can stop before he slips up and gets caught._

Nothing in the dim room changes—the same yellow sofas and half-open window shades and the same kitchen table where, backlit with pale morning sunlight, his dad had once said that Jughead had more stories inside him than one boy’s murder.

He _fixed_ it.

This calls for Pop’s. Like old times.

Like before everything got so rough.

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead shrugs on his plaid jacket because the lining is warmer and the temperature keeps on dropping. He walks the couple of blocks to Pop’s in the dark until the glow of neon lights shines out ahead. The air carries the sharp scent of evergreens from the Christmas trees propped up against raw wood frames in the parking lot.

He steps into the warmth of the diner, announced with the delicate chime of bells. Pop Tate pauses on his way out from the kitchen. Both his hands are full of plates loaded up with burgers and fries. Without missing a beat, Pop asks, “Just for you or for your old man, too?”

Jughead clears his throat. “My dad, too.”

Pop’s gaze sweeps out over the diner. “It’ll be a minute. I’m a little backed up.”

Jughead nods. He’s got nowhere in particular to be. He crosses his arms and waits, leaning against the counter where he spent so many late nights writing. The diner is maybe a quarter full with the straggling end of the dinner rush. A few single parent Northsiders feed their noisy, well-dressed kids. A group of jocks have their arms in those bright yellow sleeves thrown along the back of a booth. They laugh too loudly and toss up fries to catch in their mouths like dumb, hungry carp breaking the surface of a pool. And, by the door, three girls he thinks are cheerleaders manage not to make much progress sharing a single vanilla milkshake. On the jukebox Sam Cooke sings about forgiveness, about trying to treat somebody right, with a voice that contains the perfect sheen of distant vintage heartbreak. He scans through all the booths again, hunting for a flash of golden blonde without thinking _—_

Jughead closes his eyes.

He jumps a little at the chime of the bells, looking up, but it’s just a droopy-eyed mom in a nice suit herding her two little boys out the door as the kids shove and punch each other’s shoulders.

Jughead stares at the fluorescent glow of the huge magenta _DINER_ sign to keep his gaze from catching on the wrong booths and remembering.

Like Pop warned, the takeout order takes a while.

Eventually, Pop Tate slides a cup of coffee at him with a muttered, “save it from the drain,” like always—poured out of the pot that Pop claims will get more than half dumped anyway, no matter what time of day Jughead shows up.

As he pays seventeen of the twenty-nine dollars he needs to make last all week and carries the white takeout bag home, he thinks about how his dad will be relieved to have one less problem to worry about.

 

 

 

 

 

His dad is not relieved.

 _Celebrations_ , Jughead thinks with a tangle of barbed wire humor that tears at something in him he can never quite shield.

Motherfucking _celebrations_.

His dad rages and points and doesn’t understand about Penny, won’t listen, so Jughead shouts him down and explains, because his dad doesn’t know _because his dad wasn’t there,_ until he flings out at last how he’s proud of all this, here, this life. The words are laid out stark and ripped open between them. His dad stares up at him with an emotion that’s too beaten down for anger or even regret.

Once all Jughead’s declarations have poured out and what’s left inside him is an aching sort of silence, his dad nods, slow and careful. _You can’t unmake me,_ Jughead thinks with a sick lurch. _You can’t unmake any of this._

His dad looks down at his own hands before pressing them together, palm to palm, in a gesture that should look like prayer but doesn’t, not at all.

“Life’s too short, kid. By the time you figure that out—and all this—it’ll be too late.” His dad looks up and the weight of what’s behind his eyes knocks the rush of anger lighting up Jughead’s chest back down to nothing.

He falters and feels his throat close up.

His dad blinks, too fast, and says, “Someone told me that once.” He covers his face, pressing hard against his eyes, and laughs in a short hard burst like an ugly cough forced out by a boot to the chest. “I didn’t believe them. Just like you’re not gonna believe me.”

A pit gapes open in Jughead’s gut.

 _bike handles, rag—_ in unity there is strength— _knife, hands—_ in unity there is _—boots, check for_

A bloody half-serpent staring up at him in the dark.

His dad stands, grabs his leather jacket off the couch and without another word walks out.

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead is always hungry, even when he can’t feel that he's hungry, so he methodically eats half the takeout from Pop’s at the small dining table. He drinks both the strawberry milkshake and the orange freeze.

The rest he puts in the fridge because he can’t afford to throw out food just for spite.

A few hours crawl by as he stares at a blinking cursor and the big empty space around it and comes up with nothing. With a panicked jolt, he remembers the stained rag he folded up and stuck under the kitchen sink.

He crouches down and feels around behind the box of plastic gloves and the half-full bottle of bleach for a brush of fabric.

Is he supposed to wash it? Find a dumpster somewhere on the other side of town? Burn it?

Jughead stares down at the rag in his hand, stained with black and reddish brown, and thinks, _what the fuck do I do now?_

The climatic scenes where key evidence is discovered in a half-dozen of his favorite true crime novels flash through his mind in a blurry rush. He could try to wash the rag clean, but he can’t stop picturing the dark eddies and twists of Sweetwater River and the secrets the water yielded back up.

With a whirl of hysteria he thinks, _it’s like rock-paper-scissors_ _for getting rid of evidence._ Water beats burying anything in the earth, but fire always beats water.

 

 

 

 

 

He digs out an old copy of the _Riverdale Register_ from the trash, finds a lighter and puts on his Serpents jacket to burn the rag in the shallow fire pit next to the trailer. He doesn’t want to think about the last time he built a fire out here but he can’t stop his mind from conjuring up the warm day in spring. Jellybean had wanted s’mores and not cake on her birthday because she’d decided cake was lame. Jughead wasn't about to argue because _birthdays_ were lame and anyway the stuff for s’mores was easier to get at the last minute if his mom slipped up and forgot. He remembers the orange sunset fading from an inky-purple sky. He’d sat next to Jellybean in front of the fire and let her talk shit about his s’more making skills in between explaining to him why lossy digital compression was for losers and how something called FLAC would change his life because no part of the music is lost.

Jughead shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket and watches the small fire flicker and smoke and burn itself out. His stomach lurches when he catches himself wondering if he needs to do something with the ashes on account of the blood, the trace evidence.

How far does this—

 _Fuck it,_ he thinks and leaves the ashes smoldering in the shallow pit.

He’s climbing back up the steps when his phone dings. He glances down and sees Archie’s text and stops and reads and re-reads and that pit in his stomach—

Jughead closes his eyes, but can’t stop seeing the critical words: _we_ and _Black Hood_ and _shot_ and _dead_.

His phone chimes again.

_Meet us at Pop’s?_

He jogs up the stairs to lock the front door and then walks back to Pop’s. The familiar neon lights glow out into the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

They’re sitting together in a booth, waiting. Archie slumps way down in his seat while Betty droops forward with both elbows on the tabletop. Her hair and her face and her pale pink sweater are all smudged with dirt.

She glances up at him as he slides into the other side of the booth and then away, just as fast.

A streak of dirt runs along the side of her neck.

She looks so tired—

“What happened?”

Betty and Archie trade a look. Betty raises her eyebrows and, after a pause, Archie shrugs. She clears her throat and, without quite looking at him, she says, “Veronica’s almost here. We can tell you both.”

“He’s gone though,” Archie adds. His eyes dart over to the floor by the door. “The Black Hood. He’s dead.”

Betty stares down at her hands and frowns.

Archie repeats, “He’s _dead_.”

A big black car pulls into the parking lot outside.

 

 

 

 

 

Betty and Archie tell the story, sharing glances and switching off between parts: the missing janitor, the pot of soup on the front step, another note with one final trespass to unearth—Archie glances over at Betty who says, “The note was left in front of my house.”

Archie holds her gaze for a beat, then picks up the story for her with the finger, the phone call, the Sisters of Quiet Mercy.

“I blackmailed them.” Betty makes quick eye contact with each of them, even him. “I blackmailed the Sister to find out what happened.” Her voice goes taut with anger. “They hurt Polly there.”

Jughead stares at her, dirty and slumped forward with exhaustion and still the same girl who’d reached up to fix her ponytail in the gloomy afternoon light all those months ago before marching in to make trouble that was so polite no one recognized her _as_ trouble until it was too late.

Perhaps he shouldn't be surprised that creepy old Nana Blossom shows up again, too, right on cue with a clue. The story speeds up, from old photos to digging up an empty grave.

With another of those shared glances, Betty and Archie wrap everything up with a chase that ended on the bridge over Sweetwater River.

The unmasking reveals Svenson. Betty’s hands tighten into momentary fists as Archie describes what he remembers of those chilling green eyes peering down at him from behind the gun. Which didn't match Svenson’s—not even close.

But who knows how often what we remember isn’t what really happened?

Maybe there hadn't been so much blood running down—

Maybe her screams hadn’t—

They keep groping around for how the pieces of this fit, for why someone does anything so monstrous. But the reasons slip away from Jughead and he's left with nothing but a hollow space that opens up in his chest until he feels like he's barely in the booth with them at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, Mr. Cooper steps away from Keller and hovers near their table. He says, “Betty, honey, we should go.”

Betty pulls her posture up straight and nods once.

Mr. Cooper glances around the table and adds, “I’ll let you say your goodnights,” before retreating to a polite distance.

Archie stands to let her slide out. She touches the dirty sleeve of his jacket. Jughead can’t see her face, only her messy ponytail and all the wispy flyaway strands around the crown of her head.  

Her voice is thick like she’s shoving down tears when she says, “I'm sorry, Arch.”

“Hey, no,” he says and hugs her. “Don't be sorry.” She crumples into him, her arms around his waist and her forehead pressed against his shoulder. “You got me out again, Betty.” Archie pushes her away just enough to duck down and catch her eyes. Their faces are so close when he repeats, “You got me out.”

The pink and orange neon lights wash over them as Betty’s hand cups his elbow. At last, she nods. Archie gives her shoulders one last gentle shake and lets his hands drop as she steps back.

Archie watches her go, flinching a little when the bells jangle.

Jughead is so focused on what just went down and the familiar sensation of staring into the sealed off little world of _Betty and Archie_ from the outside that Veronica’s nudge makes him start.

She raises her eyebrows at him as she mouths, “Out from what?”

He doesn’t know. They'd just heard the Cliffs Notes version together as Betty and Archie traded off pieces of story and those glances with such a seamless back and forth.

Veronica is still staring at him, so Jughead shrugs.

Her eyes flick upwards in exasperation and as soon as Archie slides back into the booth she asks, “Out from what?”

Her whole body leans forward like she wants to reach out across the table even as her hands stay wrapped around her empty coffee cup.

Archie runs his fingers through his hair and draws in a breath that he holds a little too long. When he drops his hand, some dirt falls onto the white tabletop. Archie stares down at the pattern of dark flecks.

“The Black Hood, he—” Archie breaks off and then starts again. “Ronnie, I had to climb into—” He glances out the window into the parking lot and says, “You know what, it’s fine. We’re all fine. Betty figured it out.”

Jughead wants to fill the silence that expands between them with the first lame, inappropriate joke that comes to mind. But all he’s got is more nothing.

Behind them, the door chimes again. Archie’s face tightens with another tiny, suppressed flinch.

 

 

 

 

 

Just after midnight, sitting on the couch in the dim living room of his dad’s trailer, Jughead breaks down and texts her, _are you all right?_

He waits about twenty minutes, willing her to respond as he thinks of her window and ladders and what sort of person is able to climb up. His own message stares back at him— _are you all right?_ —until he gives up and crawls off to bed.

He hasn’t seen his dad since FP walked out hours ago, but he’s got a good guess where he’s gone and the state he’s in by now.

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead stares up at the pale yellow shapes dragged out across the ceiling from the porch light outside. He doesn’t let himself count the days since she’d fallen asleep in his bed, tries not to recall how his arm had fit to the curve of her waist. How just the tips of his fingers had touched the skin of her stomach where the borrowed shirt rucked up. He tries, but he can’t shake the way his body remembers her, soft and warm and pressed up close.

Sleep hovers so far out of reach.

At nearly two in the morning, his phone shakes against the wood of the side table. He reaches over and on the unlock screen he sees, _I'll be okay. Thanks._

Jughead stares down at his phone and hears just how she’d say that _Thanks_ —so sincerely polite but with a smile that feels like being watched from behind a two-way mirror. Even a few words from her is enough to yank on the cold knot lodged in his chest. He feels a distant rumble of—

He puts his phone on silent, then turns it face down for good measure.

Archie’s right. They're all fine. Everything’s fine.

The Black Hood is dead and Penny is gone and everyone is still okay.

He pushes the ghost out of his bed and repeats _it’s fine_ to himself, like counting sheep, till at last he drops into a dark confusion of dreams where he strips off his jacket and hat and flicks open the knife.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [@burberrycanary](http://clktr4ck.com/qcg8).


End file.
